Essen views

For ambitious people, knowing what to do is not always enough. Sometimes, we need to know what not to do.

So, like Charlie Munger, I am going to use inversion and focus on what not to do to be successful. Specifically, I will focus on two mindsets to avoid in order to be successful.

Here’s the secret to success.

Mindset 1: Impatience

I’ve always been impatient.

In a video recorded on my first day of school, I looked as if boredom and impatience were slowly and surely killing me. I was 6 years old then.

In my view, impatience is a very one-sided negative trait.

Let me illustrate.

For most of my life, I’ve quit things that I didn’t like anymore because I got impatient about the speed of progress. Things weren’t moving fast enough.

Like a chimpanzee, I’d jump from branch to branch, hoping to find something that would excite me- something that would energize and stifle the crushing boredom I felt.

That all comes down to impatience.

Because of my impatience, I started two educations and dropped out of both. This was the time I realized that something was wrong.

It was not so much that I realized that impatience was at the bottom of my ailments. It was more on the idea that I needed to change something in my life.

When it comes to studying and getting a degree, things don’t happen overnight.
From this, I learned that things take time.

It might sound trivial but until I realized this, impatience held me back in a big way.

Conversely, patience is a trait you see in almost every successful person if you study their life and work.

Picture-Perfect Patience

A prime example of patience is Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart.

Via quotivee

He opened his first store in 1945 and barely scraped by for the next few years. Then, things slowly started improving. After spending five years establishing himself as a retailer, he opened his first Ben Franklin store in 1950. A big move at the time.

Let us dwell on the fact that it took Sam Walton, one of the most successful businessmen of all time, five years before he no longer struggled. We’re not talking about success. We’re just talking about getting to a point where he doesn’t have to worry if his business is going to survive.

After this, he spent the next 12 years building a chain of Ben Franklin stores until he eventually owned 16. This is when he tasted the first modicum of success, 17 years after he started his first business.

This only happens with tremendous patience.

After spending 17 years building his retail business from the bottom up, Walton opened his first Walmart in 1962.

We all knew what happened next.

The point is that one of the most successful businessmen of all time worked his butt off for 20 years in the retail business before Walmart become a success.

Key lesson: If you want to be successful, avoid impatience like the plague.

Mindset 2: Arrogance

Another part of my personality that has held me back in the past is my arrogance.

I consider myself a pretty smart guy and sometimes, that spills over into thinking that I’m better than everyone. I am a master of the universe and don’t have anything to learn because I already know it all.

I’m sure you can see how these behaviors held me back.

It’s not that I disliked other people. I just thought I was better than them.

More intelligent, smarter, better-looking, and pretty much the bee’s knees. Whether or not this was objectively the case — which, most often, wasn’t — is beside the point.

The point is that this line of thinking is so counter-productive that it’s amazing I ever managed to accomplish anything at all.

Arrogance hampered me because it became a substitute for thought. A substitute for learning. A substitute for personal growth.

After all, why would I need to grow when I was already so amazing?

Want to know the worst part?

I was completely blind to it.

I had no idea how arrogant I was.

Let me illustrate.

When I started my first job, I was assigned a mentor. After the initial exchange of pleasantries, we got down to business. I realized pretty quickly that she didn’t have a university degree.

In my mind, at the time, that equated to being stupid. So, I assumed that she was stupid, which affected my attitude towards her as well as the people around me.

Coming straight out of school with this kind of arrogance, I’m sure you can imagine what happened next.

I was ostracized and had to move projects in order to work with other people- new people who didn’t know me.

This time, I tabled my arrogance as much as possible and lo and behold, my experience was completely different. People reacted differently to me. I felt better at work. It was easier to work with others and the quality of my overall experience increased exponentially.

The Humble-Pie Die

Have you ever wondered what it takes to become the richest man in the world?

Obviously, it takes tremendous patience because good things happen slowly. Less obvious is the fact that it requires complete lack of arrogance.

It requires a ruthless focus on learning from mistakes, a continuously expanding network of knowledge and magnificent people skills. These are all skills that would be impossible to attain in the face of arrogance.

Trust me.

So, who is this mystery man who has made a career (not to mention billions) from the humble-pie diet?

None other than investing legend Warren Buffett.

Via achievecentre

Buffett is one of my biggest idols. He is my idol because he combines one of the sharpest minds of several generations with a tremendous amount of humility. And this humility is what has helped him achieve the success that he has.

In his partnership letters, Buffett mostly writes about his mistakes, despite the fact that he wipes the floor with the market every year. His humility has allowed him to learn throughout his life and he has become one of the richest and most successful businessmen of all time because of it.

Recent Posts: Sig Nordal, Jr.

These sensual images, with curving shoulders, breasts, and thighs outlined in black, with clever references to both old masters and contemporary styles, were a bald commercial venture. But these nudes overcome the cynical appeal to a male gaze. Their bodies are idealized, smooth shapes of sex, but their faces are those of individual women: some […]

What a splendid era this was going to be, with one remaining superpower spreading capitalism and liberal democracy around the world. Instead, democracy and capitalism seem increasingly incompatible. Global capitalism has escaped the bounds of the postwar mixed economy that had reconciled dynamism with security through the regulation of finance, the empowerment of labor, a […]

Mary Shelley’s original three-volume novel Frankenstein was published quietly and anonymously in 1818 to little acclaim. The Quarterly Review stonily observed: “Our taste and our judgment alike revolt at this kind of writing…. The author leaves us in doubt whether he is not as mad as his hero.” If they had guessed the author was […]

Every author has a story beyond the one that they put down on paper. The Barnes & Noble Podcast goes between the lines with today’s most interesting writers, exploring what inspires them, what confounds them, and what they were thinking when they wrote the books we’re talking about. When Debbie Macomber decided to become a […]

Whether you were expecting it, initiating it or it just came out of the blue, handling a break-up like a man can be really difficult. It doesn’t matter if it’s the best thing for you or if you cared about her at all, there is going to be pain when things are over. So, is […]

The sky is ablaze with color during sunset at Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge in Montana. This wildlife refuge rests among the prairie potholes of the Mission Valley to serve primarily as a refuge and breeding ground for native birds. Photo by Dave Fitzpatrick, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Polite kids are a joy, aren’t they? Welcomed anywhere. Praised and held up as role models for their less polite peers. “Please” and “thank you” rolling off their well-behaved tongues. Like learning the alphabet and counting, saying thank you and please are embedded in most children’s vocabulary very early on. What a shame! Now, hear me […]

You’re reading 15 Quotes on Self-Love and Acceptance That Will Change Your Life, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles. Do you know that self-love can literally save your life? It did for the famous entrepreneur and bestselling Author, […]

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth. —Albert Schweitzer I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if […]